Residents in the area use this telephone cabinet for telephone and internet access.

Unfortunately, our internet connection speeds are slow 2 to 5 Mbps and will remain so until the superfast broadband is added to the cabinet 24, this is currently not on the Openreach’s plans.

The speed averages 2-5Mbps down and 0.4Mbps up, meaning that sometimes it’s impossible to use the internet. For example, it’s not possible to watch Netflix, Youtube or iPlayer when anyone else is using the same connection. Also, uploading files of more than a few megabytes in size is not possible, and working from home via the internet is simply not feasible.

What makes this even worse is that every other telephone cabinet in the local area has been upgraded long ago.

Whilst some residents choose to have Virgin Media’s broadband, due to lack of choice of providers.

Should Openreach fibre broadband is added, the number of suppliers of superfast broadband would increase; as the Openreach network is used by many ISP’s allowing you to choose the supplier you want (e.g. BT Infinity, Sky, PlusNet, TalkTalk, EE, Vodafone and many more). This means you could take advantage of bundle packages and the benefits that come from having multiple suppliers to choose from.

How cabinets get upgraded

Openreach’s commercial rollout, covering 66% of the population. This is assessed case-by-case on a purely commercial basis.

Birmingham City Council was awarded BDUK funding to help out in some of the commercially unviable areas. In order to make subsidy available to a private sector partner, the local authority has to run a competitive procurement process. However, the state aid clearance that had been obtained by the UK for the rural element of the BDUK programme was not suitable to encompass a city area and therefore procurement unable to take place.

It is fair to point out though, that should the tendering process be undertaken, any state aid guidance would probably indicate that the subsidy cannot be spent in areas where any private sector body has already invested in next generation broadband networks.

Where it’s gone wrong for us

Openreach has told us that the Cabinet 24 was deemed to be not commercially viable as part of the Openreach rollout programme in 2013.

From Openreach “Stechford exchange which serves this area, was upgraded to deliver fibre broadband as part of our commercial rollout. Unfortunately, delivering fibre broadband is both commercially and technically challenging. So, when an exchange is upgraded, it doesn’t mean that all cabinets are upgraded at the same time. We’ve been clear about this in our communications.

In this case cabinet 24, which serves the properties in this area, was not included in our deployment because it has too few working connections connected to it to justify the commercial investment.

As you may know, Birmingham doesn’t have the option of BDUK funding. This means that public funding isn’t available to an operator to upgrade areas that are commercially unviable.”

What you can do

Please show your support and generosity and help to upgrade the community to the superfast fibre broadband internet.